


the sun doesn't help

by adeleblaircassiedanser



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Closet Sex, Death, F/M, Formalwear, Frottage, Funeral Sex, Grief/Mourning, Hate Sex, Het, M/M, Not Like That, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Quickies, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Who am I????, more fic about gavin belson 2k16, more smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-22 14:08:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7442185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeleblaircassiedanser/pseuds/adeleblaircassiedanser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Honestly, at this point, she thinks, why wouldn’t this happen. Why wouldn’t Gavin Belson also be here, stalking me, on top of everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. man for judgment

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [gotta let go of all of our ghosts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373875) by [youjik33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/pseuds/youjik33). 



> This is basically an unauthorized sequel to @youjik33's fic from last week because it took over my whole life and ruined everything. I can't believe how much I've been thinking about this pairing, and I'm sorry to my friends and family. 
> 
> Title from Regina Spektor's Lacrimosa:  
>  _We keep on burying our dead_  
>  _We keep on planting their bones in the ground_  
>  _But they won't grow_  
>  _The sun doesn't help_  
>  _The rain doesn't help_

After the funeral, Monica really isn’t expecting to hear from him again. The evidence that he is just as much of a petty liar as he seems, a total hypocrite, talking peace and forgiveness out of one side of his mouth at the exact same moment that he’s filing a revenge lawsuit against Pied Piper just because he can’t handle having lost to Peter at TechCrunch, one last time- well, it’s not exactly making Monica feel better about her decision to fuck him.

 

Honestly, though? At least that had been a decision. In the last week Monica doesn't feel like she’s decided or done anything; conversations happen to her, the sun comes up and goes down several hours later, but she really doesn’t care either way. Her new boss has repeated the words “Peter Gregory is dead” so many times that they've lost all meaning, so every morning some part of Monica is surprised to walk into Raviga and see that tiny, owlish woman in his place. All Peter’s clients, meanwhile, are so needy, somehow finding ways to make this about themselves and their shitty, doomed companies.

 

Anyway, one evening after she’s ushered the last of the insufferable money-grubbers out of the office, and is standing behind her desk, contemplating the possibility of a cigarette- just one- a Hooli chat bubble pops up on her phone.

 

“How did you get this number?” she says, frowning down at Gavin Belson’s smug, smirking face.

 

“I’m outside,” he says. He’s in the front seat of a car, judging by the background of the image.

 

“What, here?” He nods. Monica has a lot of fucking questions about that, but she is honestly far too tired to even bother.

 

“Fine,” she says. “You can come in, I haven’t locked up yet.”

 

 _Honestly, at this point,_ she thinks, _why_ wouldn’t _this happen. Why wouldn’t Gavin Belson also be here, stalking me, on top of everything._

 

She looks up to see him leaning in the doorway, looking smug as always. He’s wearing some kind of ugly sweater, even though it’s fucking hot out; he has no eyebrows to speak of, which makes him look creepy, like a troll doll or something; Monica finds that her hands are shaking. She wouldn’t trust herself to speak even if she had anything to say.

 

“Shall- I want to go into his office,” Gavin says, with this air of entitlement to his voice that she can’t stand. _Laurie fucking Bream’s office now_ , she thinks, but she just shrugs and follows him over. There are a couple boxes of Peter’s things still by the door, nothing important or valuable, just stuff that should probably be thrown out whenever Monica can get around to going through it. Fencing magazines. Designs for miniature airplanes drawn on the backs of envelopes. Gavin’s kneeling down and rifling through one of the boxes.

 

Abruptly Monica is furious that Gavin Belson thinks he can be here, touching Peter’s things when Peter isn’t even here to complain about it- irrationally furious that Gavin Belson is here in Peter’s office and Peter is not, and no one else is left in California who gives a flying fuck (Peter’s sister, yeah, but she’s gone back to Pennsylvania now). _It’s not fair_ , she thinks, and then hates herself for thinking that. She’s not a four-year-old child. She’s pushing thirty, and she’s seen enough in this town to know that _life_ isn’t fair and never will be.

 

Be that as it may, she’s crying now, for the first time in days, and a real ugly cry too, shoulders shaking and snot running down her face and horrible sobbing noises escaping her open mouth.

 

 _Unprofessional,_ she thinks. She’s managed to hold it together this week, more or less, wearing smart pumps and sensible blouses and holding a distant, neutral smile.

 

The irony of it is, Peter knew her, could judge her on the body of her work for him over the years, would know that this is just a shitty week and give her a couple of inches of slack to get through it. Now, though, Laurie and the rest of the partners are in and out, and everything’s in flux. Everything’s in question, including Monica’s position at Raviga, so this is the week when it’s most important that she come off as more than the pretty token woman with the histrionic emotional issues, that she demonstrate that she can hold her shit together, make it look effortless. And she’s managed it, barely. Buried everything deep enough under layers of small talk and poise- but now, as Gavin fucking Belson is rifling through Peter’s private things like he has any right- anyway, she doesn’t give a fuck what Gavin Belson thinks of her or her professionalism.

 

He turns around after a minute, either not finding whatever the fuck he’s looking for, or finally unable to ignore the conspicuous display of human emotion in the room any longer. He just frowns at her, not saying anything. _It’s not fair_ , Monica thinks again.

 

After a minute or so more, she pulls herself back together, rubs her face and looks at the eye makeup that covers her hands in mild interest.

 

“What are you doing here,” she asks.

 

“You- your face,” he says, gesturing and grimacing. She nods and goes to get tissues off of the desk.

 

“Okay,” she says. “I shouldn’t have even let you in here. Tell me what you want.”

 

“You said,” Gavin starts, and then looks almost uncertain for a moment. “You said I could contact you.” She had said that, hadn’t she. She can’t remember why. Somehow, a week ago, she’d felt capable of coping and somehow also supporting someone else- a total stranger at best, at worst an enemy- it seems like something from another life.

 

“I’m not talking,” she says. “I don’t want to talk. So if that’s what you want, you know. Hire a therapist.” He nods.

 

Something in her, the same part that’s satisfied by the killing off of cells every time smoke scorches her throat, that’s desperate to get out from under this stupid, heavy fog, to fuck up if it’s the only alternative to inaction- something in her says

 

“You can fuck me again. We can fuck on his desk,” and that idea should be disgusting or ridiculous but it’s happening.

 

“Get your,” and Gavin gestures at her pencil skirt impatiently. “You have to get that shit out of the way.”

 

Monica crosses the office, unzips the skirt and lets it fall to the floor, pulls her underwear and pantyhose down just far enough and braces her hands against the edge of the desk.

 

“Condom,” she says, and he sneers and brandishes one.

 

“Obviously. I have no intention of paying child support-”

 

“Shut up and fuck me,” she says, and he obliges. She’s not even that turned on, honestly, not wet enough for the stretch not to skirt the rough edge of painful. She grunts. Gavin grips her hips and moves her, driving in and out monotonously. The angle is not particularly good for her, though it is convenient how close they are in height; and when she glances over her shoulder he’s not even looking at her. His eyes are scanning the room, brow furrowed. He’s thinking about Peter.

 

“He would fucking hate you for this,” she says, and Gavin growls.

 

“Fuck him,” he says. “Let him hate me. He’s good at it.”

 

 _I hate you,_ she thinks, and it’s true. It doesn’t even make any sense to her why Peter cared about this small-spirited, selfish man. Somehow even though he’s fucking her it’s like he doesn’t know she’s there- she might as well be a fleshlight or something, just an accessory- he’s certainly not touching her anywhere that might help her get off.

 

There is definitely something unfeminist about how wet that fact is making her. She reaches down to drag two fingers over her clit, moaning. This is weird, this should be weird, this doesn’t feel weird. It feels right. For the first time in a while Monica is one hundred percent sure where she is. She comes almost too easily, faster than she ever has with a vibrator or the boyfriend of the week lapping dutifully at her cunt.

 

Gavin makes sort of a surprised noise, and she tightens her cunt around him again, on purpose this time, still feeling the aftershocks of her orgasm. He twitches inside her. _Fuck._ Monica reaches a hand up to push her hair out of her face, pushes back on his dick, willing him to hurry up but not wanting to speak and remind him that she’s there. It doesn’t take too much longer after that for him to finish and pull out, tying off the condom and throwing it in the wastebasket. Monica wonders whether Laurie will look down and notice it in the morning. It’s still less conspicuous than Gavin pulling out and coming all over Peter’s old desk, which she realizes she’d half been expecting him to do. If it was anyone else that would be a ridiculous thought, but this is Gavin Belson.

 

He zips up his pants and starts to say something. “Well- good,” he says, and then does a weird little bow.

 

“Mhmm,” Monica says, and does a little half-wave. She waits for him to leave, then gets in her car. She smokes two cigarettes on the drive home and then goes straight to bed, even though it’s barely nine p.m.   

  



	2. the rabbits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She gets the thing lit, finally, inhales and breathes out on a sigh of relief. 
> 
> "That's a filthy habit, you know," Gavin says. 
> 
> "Ask me if I give a fuck, old man," she says, rolling her eyes so hard it almost hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now there's more of this... i meant to add like 500 words of porn and @daisiestdaisy has me out here writing an additional 3000 words for the pairing NO ONE asked for or wants. (it's a small crime, and i've got no excuse) I actually think this is pretty good, writing-wise, so idk. Read if you want.

In July, the annual STAT black tie fundraising gala rolls around again. Monica feels a bit off-kilter, this year, knowing she’ll be attending with Laurie. After a few months of adjustment, she’s come to like her new boss, but. For the past three years running this had been one of several occasions throughout the year where she and her Hooli counterparts were tasked with running interference, making sure that the low-level tension between Peter Gregory and Gavin Belson stayed under the radar enough not to embarrass the Raviga board or Hooli’s shareholders. 

 

She’s taken unpleasantly by surprise when, before the silent auction is announced, the two founders of some dumb early-aughts camera project Peter had backed get up on stage and announce that they’re establishing-  such-and-such - fund to honor Peter Gregory’s memory - his tragic- Monica can’t really hear anything but the thud of her own heartbeat. It’s like she’s underwater. Thoughtlessly, her eyes wander the room, and perhaps inevitably, they light on the Hooli table across the room. Gavin Belson is there, frowning, looking as discomfited as she feels. He glances up, and their eyes meet briefly. Who ever those fucks are, they’re still talking, up on the stage, and Monica finds herself unable to restrain her resentment of that fact. Who are these strangers to be speaking Peter’s name as if they knew him? 

 

“Shut up!” she wants to yell, and throw a glass, maybe, and storm out. Instead she pulls an apologetic grimace-smile at Laurie and stands to excuse herself. On the other end of the hall, Gavin Belson does the same. 

 

Monica glances behind herself once as she steps into the corridor, and sees him following at a respectable distance- not that anyone is watching them. Even the coat check girl has disappeared, and conveniently has done so without drawing down and locking the screen that should be covering the top half of the door. Monica commends herself for picking this dress- tea-length, with a circle skirt- as she hikes it up and clambers over the counter and into the coatroom. She’d considered a more form-fitting skirt, but maybe some part of her had known she wouldn’t just be sitting complacently the whole night. 

 

“Come on,” she says, and Gavin looks disgruntled but vaults over the counter relatively easily. He’s stronger than you’d expect from whose job seems to entail sitting around yelling at other, smarter people all day. 

 

He’s definitely much stronger than Peter was. 

 

Monica walks around a corner, so there’s a full rack of jackets in between them and the still-open coat check window. She wonders why there are so many jackets in here, in July, in California. 

 

“Is it me,” she says, unable to hold back any longer, “or was that whole-  _ thing  _ just now totally-”

 

“Extremely presumptuous and fucking tacky?” Gavin says “Yeah, I’ll say. Pretty bald-faced attempt to cash in on- a name with some goodwill value left-”

 

“Right, after their how many bankruptcies? No one here knows who they are-”

 

“No one remembers their irrelevant hardware brand, nor should they.”

 

“Peter might not even have recognized them,” Monica says viciously, “if they’d come in for a sitdown.”

 

That’s not precisely true- Peter had a very good memory- it was more likely that he wouldn’t have deigned to acknowledge the acquaintance, which amounted to the same thing. 

 

Monica breathes in and finds that she’s done talking. It’s not making her any less angry. She needs a real distraction. 

 

Gavin looks mildly surprised when she drops to her knees- not their usual- but he doesn’t say anything, and he moves to help her with the buttons of his fly- some kind of vintage bullshit- and to pull his underwear out of the way. He’s not hard yet, but that just means a challenge, which Monica relishes. It means she has to focus, to think only about this. She takes him in her mouth gingerly and sort of holds him on her tongue, being lazy for a couple of minutes, feeling the weight as his cock stiffens slowly. She glances up at him- he’s quieter than the guys she’s used to - and he meets her eyes and gives a slight nod. 

 

Monica really doesn’t usually like giving head all that much- it’s tiring, and monotonous, and smelly sometimes- but all her ex-boyfriends had asked for it early and often, been so excessively into it, so appreciative, that she’d been willing to compromise. Weirdly, though, there must be something deeply wrong with her, because Gavin Belson’s total detachment, the amount of effort she’s having to put in to get the slightest reaction? It’s making this way more fun for her. She has to step it up- eventually someone might miss one of them and come looking, or even just want their unnecessary mid-summer jacket back - Monica sits up a little taller and reaches out with her free hand to trace a line with two fingers- it’s funny to think about. With most guys there’s a whole production around the fact that this feels good, that it won’t make them gay, that she won’t tell anyone- but she has a feeling that’s not a concern here. She traces carefully around his rim with her fingertips, then scratches lightly up the perineum, acrylics dragging a little, and is rewarded with a low moan. He shifts so his thighs are spread further apart. Monica feels a thrill of victory. If her mouth wasn’t full she’d be grinning; if she wasn’t wearing these long-ass nails, if she had a little lube with her, she might try fucking him open a bit. 

 

That thought has a jolt of heat surging through her. Both hands now occupied, she settles for squeezing her damp thighs together and rolling her hips forward, keeping a rhythm with the up-down motions of her mouth. Gavin’s still not saying much, but he’s panting heavily and his thighs are trembling. 

 

\---

 

Gavin remembers hearing somewhere- from a friend, maybe, or a comedy special- that women didn’t relish giving oral sex, and especially did not tend to swallow. This factoid occurs to him at the last moment, unbidden, and he warns her-

 

“Ms. Hall-” but she gives a slight nod and makes an encouraging sound, so Gavin chalks it up to faulty intel and lets go. He’s not expecting her to stand and kiss him- they hadn’t kissed at all the last couple times they did this, though they had that first day, in his office. He’s definitely unprepared for the bitter salty taste she spills into his mouth. He’s amused. Usually it’s him on the other side of that trick. He’s game, though, licks into the corners of her mouth to get every last drop. Absently he worries that she expects reciprocation, of an oral nature, which is impossible for a number of reasons. 

 

She pulls back from the kiss, though, wiping her mouth, and she’s breathing hard. Her face is red and blotchy, a light layer of sweat beading on her forehead. Her eyes are glassy, the makeup around them starting to smudge. Her eyes are dark, like Peter’s. 

 

She runs a hand through her hair, then makes an exasperated noise and gathers it into a sort of pile on top of her head and secures it with an elastic. 

 

“That looks incredibly messy,” Gavin points out. “Don’t you think your boss will notice-”

 

“Shut up,” Monica says. “Can you just,” and before Gavin really knows what’s happening she’s moving him so his thigh is between her legs, the skirt of her dress bunched up around her waist. 

 

“Just,” she huffs, and grabs onto his shoulder with one hand, but after a couple of seconds it becomes clear she doesn’t really seem to expect him to  _ do  _ anything; she’s rocking back and forth at a vigorous, if steady, pace. Her breath escapes in little keening sounds. Gavin cocks an ear to make sure no one’s coming down the deserted hallway- in hindsight, a coat closet with a half-open door hadn’t been the best choice of venue- but he doesn’t hear anything. He wonders absently how long this usually takes. It’s been years since the last time he was with a woman, before her. He hardly missed it, but now he finds himself lacking a frame of reference. Monica usually comes before he does, he thinks, or if not finishes herself off with her fingers (or, once, a small vibrator). Is it usual for her to pleasure herself like this,  _ sans  _ penetration, grinding down on him like an animal in heat? 

 

_ Consider the dog,  _ Gavin thinks.  _ Consider the cat. _

 

She’s so wet that he’s worried his pants will show a stain, which in combination with her disheveled and overheated appearance would make plain to any intelligent observer what has taken place. Gavin watches her face- her eyes are closed, brow furrowed- and thinks about Peter. 

 

He’d fucked Peter in this exact room, actually, once- a dozen years ago, maybe. Both of them escaping their respective handlers, at the stage in their vicious, perennial cycle where angle boiled over and gave way to the overwhelming lust that had never stopped simmering, latent, under the surface. He’d sucked bruises high into Peter’s neck that night, spiteful, and Peter had murmured words which, by that time, he no longer meant under his breath when he came. 

 

“ _ Oh _ !” Monica yelps, jolting Gavin back to the moment. For a second he thinks she’s finished, but she’s frowning, making a frustrated noise, and reaching for his right hand. 

 

“Just,” she says, and meets his eyes, pupils completely blown. She manipulates his fingers into the shape she wants- Gavin is reminded of his childhood piano teacher. Monica turns his hand over so the palm is facing upwards, then drags it down and under her skirt. The fabric is smoother and silkier to the touch than he would have expected from looking at it. She adjusts her position until he’s cupping her, gently at first, but she grabs his wrist and sort of presses him up against her, so she’s grinding down insistently on the ball of his hand. 

 

“Sorry,” she says, biting her lip. “Just a little-” 

 

It’s an odd sensation- Gavin finds himself just considering the nature of bone and cartilage, how odd the human form is as a feat of engineering, as she drips down between his fingers. 

 

“Oh,” she whines after two or three minutes, dropping her head down to rest on his shoulder- then “ _ fuck _ , fuck, fuck,” and then she sort of convulses, everything seizing up for a moment, even her shoulders shaking minutely. Her mouth drops open as she looks up at him. 

 

“Holy shit,” she says, smiling faintly, as he extricates his hand. He’s sniffing it ambivalently when she hands him a tissue and a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of a nearby purse. 

 

“That’s not your handbag,” Gavin says, an educated guess. 

 

“Nope,” she says. “But if whoever’s bag it is catches us in flagrante, you can use two hundred of those billions of dollars of yours to buy her a new one. Anyway, I’m leaving everything except- “ she holds up a turquoise box and a lighter. 

 

“Cigarettes?” Gavin says, bemused.

 

“Yep. You can have one if you want,” and before he knows what’s happening she’s climbing back out over the door. 

\----

 

Monica looks both ways like she’s in a heist movie once she’s back into the hallway, but God must be on her side for once because there’s no one there. 

 

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she tells Gavin. “Take these and meet me outside.” She hands him the cigarettes and the lighter. He blinks at her impassively, but she doesn’t wait to see whether he does it. 

 

In the bathroom, she goes into a stall and steps hurriedly out of her panties, which are soaked beyond all recognition. She stuffs them into the little metal trash can, the one meant for used tampons, offering an apology under her breath to the universe and to the specific person who was going to find that in the morning. It’s impossible to regret it, though, given how much more comfortable she is already. She washes her hands, examines her appearance in the mirror. Gavin had not been lying about her hair- she shakes it down, rakes fingers through the frizz forcefully and manages to twist it back into something workable enough to get her through the last two hours of the night. Her makeup is another story, lips swollen and a darker pink than the lipstick she’d put on to match this dress, mascara starting to run into the corners of her eyes. She cleans up as much as she can in thirty seconds, but then the desire for a cigarette overcomes her concern for her image or reputation. It’s been a long fucking day. 

 

She finds Gavin standing around the corner of the building, in a half-shadowed alley, leaning against the concrete wall. He looks very much out of place, she thinks as she takes the goods from him and holds the cigarette between her front teeth. The lighter is unfamiliar, has some kind of trick to it, and her hands are shaking again. She feels the agitation from earlier, which the orgasm had almost chased out, start to return, drawing her shoulders inward. 

 

Gavin clears his throat. She gets the thing lit, finally, inhales and breathes out on a sigh of relief. 

  
"That's a filthy habit, you know," Gavin says. 

  
  
"Ask me if I give a fuck, old man," she says, rolling her eyes so hard it almost hurts.

 

For the first thirty seconds or so she’s able to focus on the pleasurable guilt to the exclusion of every other horrible thing, but eventually she registers that Gavin is watching her keenly. She spares him a glance, lifting her eyebrows. 

 

“You want one?” Gavin shakes his head. 

 

“No. I merely- I’m curious. Is this the sort of thing you did with him?” For a second she doesn’t know what he means. 

 

“With Peter?” she says, disbelieving. He nods. Monica feels her face flush. 

 

_ Why is this the embarrassing thing?  _ she asks herself.  _ You just dry humped him like it was your eighth grade dance. _

 

Regardless, there are indignant tears springing to her eyes. She’s more upset, she realizes, on Peter’s behalf. 

 

“Peter would  _ never- _ ” her voice breaks. “He was- he was old enough to be my father,” she splutters out, staring through swimming eyes at her patent-leather shoes. 

 

That’s not what she meant, exactly- she meant to say that Peter had been her boss, and that he had taken his responsibility for mentoring her seriously, and he had respected her for much more than her looks, unlike every other sleazy old man in the VC industry. It doesn’t sound like a lot, now, as she imagines Gavin’s reaction and tries to put the words into the proper order, but it was. At age twenty-five, three years out of school with no real prospects, doubting herself and having watched the guys she’d graduated with getting snapped up like so many T-bonds the day Lehman folded, for a man like Peter to take a chance on her, to give her so much rope and never expect her to hang herself- it had meant the world. 

 

Gavin makes a wry sound, almost a chuckle, and she looks up. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding it. “Just- you know Peter was only two and a half years older than me, right?” 

 

In this moment, Monica truly appreciates Gavin - he’s the most efficient way for her to jump from grief and shame to anger, a shift that feels almost relieving. 

 

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, if you wanna question my fucking motivations and my decision-making process, what would you say you are doing, exactly?”

 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“Well, you’re gay,” she points out. He doesn’t flinch, and she’s not sure whether she had expected him to. He definitely doesn’t deny it. 

 

“Your point?” he asks after a few moments of silent eye contact. 

 

“You ever think it’s a little fucked up that this is like the fifth time in eight months we’ve done this and we both know you’re not even attracted to me?”

 

Gavin tilts his head, makes a face like he’s considering your point. “It’s closer to nine months, actually,” he says. 

 

“Whatever,” she says, shaking her head. “I need another cigarette.” 

 

This time, he takes one, lights it off the tip of hers. They smoke quietly, and Monica takes a moment to examine her motivations, just for herself. This night probably can’t get more fucked up on an emotional level than it already is, and the phone she stuffed into her bra when she left the dining hall hasn’t buzzed. Laurie’s probably already forgotten she was here. 

 

It is a little weird, admittedly, but in the months since losing Peter she hasn’t had the energy to keep up with the three or four dating profiles she maintains just to keep her mom and sisters pacified. She doesn’t have a lot of energy that’s not taken up with adjusting to a new boss, a new life really, and keeping up with Pied Piper’s constant attempts at self-destruction and the whole roster of other clients who are even worse. This isn’t a regular thing, it’s not like her and Gavin Belson’s paths cross all that often naturally. 

 

But it’s nice, interacting with a man who will talk straight to her, who looks her in the face and is the absolute antithesis of all the programmers and wannabe entrepreneurs falling all over their feet trying to impress her. It’s refreshing. In some small ways, actually, talking to Gavin Belson is a little like talking to Peter again. Before Peter died she’d had trouble seeing how they could have ever been close, how Peter’s visionary genius could be at all reflected in this nasty, petty, egotistical man. He had brought out the very worst in Peter, that much is beyond debate. Somehow, though, they’ve reached an understanding. Part of her, too, realizes that there are many, many things she still doesn’t know about Peter, and that Gavin is the only one who might offer any insight into the enigma.  

 

“I haven’t smoked since- I don’t know when,” he says. “Peter used to- he was so snotty about it, I half kept it up just to piss him off. After-”

 

Monica waits, hungrily, but Gavin trails off. “After what?”

 

“I just remember him being surprised, once, at an event like this, early nineties- he came up to me and said ‘You have not taken a cigarette break in four hours and thirty-seven minutes. This is unusual.’ We hadn’t spoken in  _ months  _ at this point.” 

 

Monica grins. “Classic Peter.”

 

“Yeah. His face when I told him I’d quit- Jesus. It got harder and harder for me to surprise him over the years but that one? Yeah, he was surprised.”

 

Gavin drops the butt on the ground and grinds it out with his heel. Monica offers him the box. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully that is the end of that!!! Maybe I've finally gotten this twisted pairing out of my system. Maybe not. Maybe I'll become a full-time het writer. Who knows.

**Author's Note:**

> The great news is, there is probably even more of this coming, like, tomorrow. 
> 
> Come talk to me about this pairing especially and all other Gavin Belson pairings in general at adeleblaircassiedanser.tumblr.com. Thank you.


End file.
